NaDiA Project: Digital Media and Old Age

Digitalization is one of the main drivers for change and innovation in our society. However, some groups of people are left out due to their lack of technical knowledge, digital competence and acceptance. In Germany, a majority of older adults belongs to these groups that do not make use of the added value of digital media in different areas of life. As technology developers and co-design researchers we would like to change this situation and, on the one hand, be in continuous dialogue with older adults around their technology needs and, on the other hand, develop technology that fits these needs.

In the NaDiA (i.e. Nachgefragt! Digital im Alter, aber wie? German for Digital in Old Age, but how?) project we focus on encouraging questions from older adults around digitalization and digital media and starting a dialogue between scientists and citizens around these questions. To reach intergenerational understanding we bring together students and young researchers with older adults to co-create solutions around the issues of low digital competence and technology acceptance of older adults.

The goals of the project are (1) making research and development of digital media in our faculty (and generally) more visible and understandable to citizens, (2) having people explore digital media and create positive experiences to lower the threshold to use them while increasing digital competence, and (3) collect ideas from citizens for future research and development in this area.

The project is a collaboration of Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences and Caritasverband Düsseldorf and part of the Science Year 2022 (Wissenschaftsjahr: https://www.wissenschaftsjahr.de/2022/), a yearly research initiative by the German Ministry of Education and Research. This year the central topic is citizen participation in science and a transfer of scientific knowledge to society.

If you are curious about the progress of this project check out the project website at https://codeforhealth.de/wissenschaftsjahr/.

Project lead: Alina Huldtgren, Holger Klapperich